TheMacintoshis the “first” Mac in the literal sense of the term. If Apple had already marketed computers, there was clearly a period in its history before and after 1984. Since then, Apple has continued to produce Macs. The Cupertino company is today a long way from its first designs and none of the members of the team who worked on the Macintosh could have imagined that Apple's adventure in computing would go this far.
Interviewed by Wired (articlein Englishavailable in source), five legendary Apple executives recalled the history of Macs, from 1984 to 2024. Alan Dye, vice president of human interface design, pays tribute to Apple's work to “centralize” the design of its products.
Ambitious work
Building a computer today requires more than 50 different teams to work together, all focused on a specific point on the machine. According to Dye, Apple has the rare ability to “group” all these beautiful people in the same space and the same direction, this is what has been the strength of Apple for so many years.
For his part,Craig Federighi, one of Apple's thinking heads and the vice-president in charge of software engineering, remembers the failures of the Macs. He mentions in particular the G4 or the recent arrival of the TouchBar on MacBook Pros. In their eyes, these attempts at innovation are the key factor that has allowed Apple to last over time.
The apple brand must be ambitious and try things. If it doesn't work, however, she is able to “take a step back” in the words of Craig Federighi, in order to question herself and remove the functionality that does not please the public.
Innovation, accessibility and the future
Greg Joswiak, Molly Anderson and John Ternus, all three vice-presidents of Apple, agree in their response. Apple's great strength over more than forty years can be summed up in three points. The first is the constant desire for innovation, whether a product works or not, Apple's teams are always looking to improve it.
The other very important point for Apple is to offer a device to all audiences. Today the range of Macs covers students on a tight budget as well as families looking for good value for money and professionals in the field who want a high-performance device and are ready to pay the price.
Finally, Apple is above all a vision of the future.The arrival of silicon chips in 2020has allowed the Apple to take on another dimension and the “revolutions are still to come” assures Molly Anderson.
